I really don’t have time to write, so here is another crazy video from Molotov Mitchell, which I haven’t watched yet (because I do not have time to write). In it, Joe Jervis reports that he “talks about one of these fictitious men, mocking his manner of speaking while simultaneously claiming to have “really loved him.” Riiiiight. Sounds about right.
If you forgot, Molotov was the one who defended the Ugandan genocide in a very well-produced video, the kind that is meant to evoke the wingnut notion of “We are hipped hopped too, like the all the cool kids (who beat us up)!”
As Jeremy Hooper said, there are no words for this. The man’s grasp on history is as tenuous as his grasp on the spirit of the religious text he claims as his own. His pig ignorant refusal to consider sexuality as it is, rather than how he’s been brainwashed to believe it is, speaks for itself. His defense of genocide and his homophobia is reprehensible.
This is what incitement to violence looks like.
By the way, a commenter at Good As You notes that the Old Testament passages “Molotov” quotes are really damn close to certain passages which condemn tattoos.
But then again, Religious Right freaks are the worst of the cherry-pickers when it comes to interpreting scripture, because they have no respect for it, except as a prop behind which to hide their bigotry.
Many thanks to Rob Tisinai for pointing out a serious loophole in Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
The wording of the legislation allows Uganda to execute anyone found guilty of repeat offences involving homosexuality “or related offences” which include speaking out in defense of tolerance, or being a relative, pastor or doctor of a homosexual and refusing to report that person to the authorities for execution.
I was skeptical about the concerns involving this loophole late last week, but Rob has convinced me.
Cliff Kincaid is a peach. Really. He’s one of the only Radical Christian Imams who is honest about the fact that he wants gay people dead. He made his original statements last week, and now he’s gotten on the internet again to flesh out his explanation for why gay people should be dead. He also has some harsh words for Senator Tom Coburn, who has joined up with Al Franken and Russ Feingold in drafting a Senate bill condemning the Ugandan legislation. (Absorb that last sentence before I go on, will you? Coburn has joined with Franken and Feingold. That’s how universal the disgust over this bill really is, among evolved, sentient human beings. Lambs are lying down with wingnuts, for god’s sake. Apparently Cliff Kincaid is not an evolved, sentient human being, at least not by any rational definition.) So let’s have a look at what Cliffy has to say:
Echoing the claims of liberals in the media, who have targeted Uganda for isolation and a denial of foreign aid for considering the legislation, Coburn has called it “an absurd proposal to execute gays” that somehow threatens progress against AIDS. Lesbian MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow has repeatedly referred to the legislation as the “Kill the Gays bill.”
But as AIM has reported in a series of articles, this is deliberate distortion. Maddow and her media collaborators, such as Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post, have tried to obscure the fact that the government of Uganda is considering passage of the anti-homosexuality bill because of the growing concern by officials and religious leaders that foreign homosexuals and special interest groups are trying to spread homosexuality throughout the country and undermine the country’s return to traditional moral values. Campaigns and groups promoting the rights of “sexual minorities” have emerged in Uganda and other African countries, with funding from billionaire George Soros, a major financial supporter of “gay rights” in the U.S.
Sadly, no. It’s too bad Cliff Kincaid is an unrepentant pathological liar, but he is. There is no distortion in the reporting. Any literate human being (sorry to exclude you, Cliff) can read the bill. The fact that certain Christian leaders in Uganda are fools who either truly believe that “foreign gays” are invading Uganda, or are deliberately manipulating the people in order to distract them from the real problems facing that nation is not a proof that the reporting on the legislation is any less than factual. What’s sad is that Cliff Kincaid apparently is just as easily spooked by gay people as the Ugandan religious leaders, what with all the factual information at his disposal.
Of course, you know you’re dealing with a nutcase when they bring an issue back to George Soros. The fact that this one billionaire who happens to support progressive causes (like the Right doesn’t have any parallel figures) has become such a villainous boogeyman for much of the American Right exposes just what scaredy-pants ninnies right-wingers really are.
Uganda emphasizes abstinence and monogamy in its fight against AIDS, in contrast to the reckless “safe sex” approach popularized by “progressives” in the U.S. who want to avoid finding homosexuality itself to be a dangerous “lifestyle.”
Uh, actually, the safe sex (scare quotes not necessary for things that actually exist, Cliffypants!) approach is the effective approach. Uganda used to be a model for HIV/AIDS prevention, but their numbers have actually plateaued (and may be rising) over the last several years, as the emphasis on abstinence began to overshadow a comprehensive approach. So, wrong again, Clifton!
The Ugandan bill does provide for harsh measures against homosexual conduct, including the death penalty for such practices as pedophilia, facilitating homosexual activity, and deliberately spreading AIDS. As such, however, Ugandan Christian ministers see the legislation as a necessary and continuing part of Uganda’s successful anti-AIDS effort.
Well, if Ugandan Christians think it’s necessary, far be it from us to question them, right, Cliff? I mean, there’s nothing wrong with a little genocide, as long as the leaders have a rationale, right?
Conservatives were shocked to see Coburn, a conservative leader and medical doctor, jump into bed with Feingold and Franken and other liberals to attack Uganda’s legislative process and pro-family political leaders and activists.
Uh, what conservatives were shocked, Cliff? It’s not a good idea to refer to yourself in the plural, sir. It’s a good indicator of mental illness.
Uganda was once ruled by a homosexual pedophile King named Mwanga, who tortured and murdered Christian youth who refused his sexual advances. Their sacrifices are celebrated every June 3, Martyr’s Day in the nation. This terrible period in Uganda’s history has never been forgotten.
Relevance? The Mwanga thing has been repeated by Scott Lively as well. Here’s the thing: As usual, these men are lying. Even when they keep the general parameters of the story correctly intact, they lie. Here are the actual details of the Martyr’s Day history. The young men were killed for their Christian faith. The timeframe for this was 1885-1887. Mwanga was born in 1868. This means that his time of “pedophilia” happened when he was ages 17 to 19. The martyrs ranged in age from 18-25. There is no scenario under which sexual advances toward grown men can be considered “pedophilia,” especially when the supposed pedophile is younger than them!
The extent of Cliff Kincaid’s pathological lying is truly stunning.
Anyway, he goes on and on and on, and it gets boring after a while, but at no time does he express any personal problems with the idea of genocide against gay people, and he continues to condemn Coburn for speaking out against it, so we must only assume that Cliff Kincaid actively desires the death of gay people. I hope the Southern Poverty Law Center* is paying attention.
*Incidentally, we reported the other day that the Illinois Family Institute had been put back on the list of SPLC anti-gay hate groups, because they had. Jeremy Hooper also reported it. But now their name is mysteriously missing from the list again, and I’d like to know why. More when I find out.
Uganda’s parliament is preparing to pass a brutal new law that would punish gay people with prison — even death.
Initial international criticism drove the President to call for a review. But after a well-funded and vicious lobbying effort by extremists, the bill looks set to be passed — threatening widespread persecution and bloodshed.
Opposition to the bill is rising, including from the Anglican church. Ugandan gay rights advocate Frank Mugisha writes, This law will put us in serious danger. Please, sign the petition and tell others to stand with us – if there’s a huge global response, our government will see that Uganda will be internationally isolated by the proposed law, and strike it down.
With the decision expected in days, only an irresistible wave of worldwide pressure will be enough to save Frank’s life and many others. Let’s build a huge petition to stop the gay death law — click here to take action, then forward this email:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/uganda_rights/?vl
The petition will be delivered to President Museveni, members of the review committee and Ugandan embassies worldwide this week before it’s too late, as well as to key donor governments.
The bill proposes life imprisonment for anyone convicted of having same-sex relations and imposes the death penalty for “serial offenders”. NGOs working to prevent the spread of HIV could be imprisoned for up to 7 years for “promoting homosexuality”. Even members of the public face up to three years in jail if they fail to report homosexual activity to the police within 24 hours!
The bill’s advocates claim that it defends national culture, but its strongest critics come from within Uganda. The Reverend Canon Gideon Byamugisha is one of many who’s written to us – he says,
It is violating our cultures, traditions and religious values that teach against intolerance, injustice, hatred and violence. We need laws to protect people — not ones that will humiliate, ridicule, persecute and kill them en masse.
By rejecting this dangerous bill and supporting the breadth of opposition to it, we can help set a crucial precedent. Let’s build massive support for Uganda’s human rights defenders, and save lives by stopping this bill — sign now here, then tell friends and family:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/uganda_rights/?vl
With hope and determination,
Alice, Ricken, Ben, Paul, Benjamin, Pascal, Raluca, Graziela and the whole Avaaz team
SOURCES
African letter to Ugandan President to throw out Anti-Homosexual Bill:
http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=22761
Ugandan church leader brands anti-gay bill ‘genocide’:
Uganda’s corrupt and undemocratic parliament is preparing to pass a bill that may execute LGBT Ugandans and imprison anyone who works to prevent HIV infection among LGBT Ugandans, who favors tolerance, or who fails to report gay or transgender loved ones to the authorities.
Ugandan and international human rights activists are responding with a last-ditch petition.
The petition will be delivered to President Museveni, members of the review committee and Ugandan embassies worldwide this week, as well as to key donor governments.
Ugandan gay rights advocate Frank Mugisha writes, “This law will put us in serious danger. Please, sign the petition and tell others to stand with us – if there’s a huge global response, our government will see that Uganda will be internationally isolated by the proposed law, and strike it down.”
The Reverend Canon Gideon Byamugisha says of the legislation, “It is violating our cultures, traditions and religious values that teach against intolerance, injustice, hatred and violence. We need laws to protect people — not ones that will humiliate, ridicule, persecute and kill them en masse.”
The host of the petition is Avaaz.org, which describes itself as “a 3.8-million-person global campaign network that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform global decision-making.”
The text of the petition reads:
To President Museveni of Uganda, Members of the Review Committee, and donor governments:
We stand with citizens across Uganda who are calling on their government to withdraw the Anti-Homosexual Bill, and to protect the universal human rights embodied in the Ugandan constitution. We urge Uganda’s leaders and donors to join us in rejecting persecution and upholding values of justice and tolerance.
Box Turtle Bulletin has helped to identify some of leading U.S. Anglican churches — dropouts from the Episcopal Church — that now take orders from the human-rights opponents who lead the churches of Uganda and Nigeria.
An article in the LA Times from 2004 identified three of the charter members of this network:
St. David’s Episcopal Church in North Hollywood, Calif.
All Saints’ in Long Beach, Calif.
St. James in Newport Beach, Calif.
However, since 2004, many many more churches have joined what is now the Anglican Church in America.
Whether they stop to think about it or not, these churches implicitly affirm their African leaders’ efforts to imprison and torture homosexual persons and their families and friends. The churches’ African leaders also affirm extralegal tolerance for vigilantism and corrective rape.
Please find a church near you. Then politely ask the church to state publicly its detailed position regarding Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, regarding the criminalization of homosexuality in the United States and Canada, and regarding freedom of expression and freedom of religion for persons who affirm sexual honesty and individual freedom. Remind them that their African leaders’ positions will be assumed to be their own, unless they say otherwise. Please let us know what you hear from them.
Some bloggers are repeating a rumor to the effect that Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill exposes family members and friends of LGBT Ugandans to the death penalty.
Not true.
The death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” is defined in Part II of the legislation to include “serial offender,” but the offense in this context is defined narrowly as “homosexuality” and not related offenses. Related offenses and their penalties are addressed in Part III of the legislation.
Part III, Section 14, states:
Failure to disclose the offence.
A person in authority, who being aware of the commission of any offence under this Act, omits to report the offence to the relevant authorities within twenty-four hours of having first had that knowledge, commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding two hundred and fifty currency points or imprisonment not exceeding three years.
In other words, the bill punishes the pastors, families, and friends of LGBT people to 3 years in prison for failing to report a loved one to police for life imprisonment or execution.
Clause 13 of the legislation punishes, with a sentence of at least 5 years, any speech by friends, families, pastors, medical and academic professionals, media, or politicians which might be perceived as less than all-out condemnation of homosexuality, or which might be perceived by ideologues as assisting LGBT people by educating them about disease prevention — activities which are vaguely described as “related activities,” “related practices,” and “promoting homosexuality.”
You see, behind every obnoxious book is a secret gay author!
Dianetics? Richard Simmons.
Atlas Shrugged? J. Edgar Hoover.
Twilight? That would be Bruce Vilanch.
Jewel’s book of poetry? Wanda Sykes!
This is the world according to gay-obsessed Scott Lively, who’s most known around these parts as the man who went to Uganda and told an audience there, among other grotesque and dishonest things, that gays were responsible for the genocide in Rwanda, essentially handing David Bahati one of the proverbial guns he needed to get the genocide going. Now he’s popped up again, e-mailing a blogger named Benzion Chinn, who had been writing about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,to let him know that there’s a theory out there that maybe it was written by George Bernard Shaw! Here’s Lively’s e-mail:
At the Library of Congress is an obscure book by Samuel Igra which makes the case that “The Protocols…Zion” was actually written by George Bernard Shaw. I don’t remember the title, but I read a portion in DC when I was researching another book by Igra and I remember thinking at the time that his case seemed quite plausible, though I don’t remember the details now.
It is common knowledge that Shaw was a close friend of the homosexual poet Bruce Douglas, the “translator” of the Protocols.
Regards,
Dr. Scott Lively
He’s just sayin’! Here’s a thought, you know, maybe it was written by one of my super-homosexual boogeymen!
Chinn, of course, handily disposed of this notion after doing a bit of research on Lively’s obsession with blaming gay people for every evil that’s ever befallen the world:
Samuel Igra, Lively’s source, seems to have been one of the main originators of this Nazism and homosexuality link with his 1945 book, Germany’s National Vice. According to Igra, Hitler was a homosexual prostitute in Vienna and then in Munich from 1907-1914. (See Gregory Woods A History of Gay Literature: the Male Tradition pg. 251-53.) Obviously there were Nazis who were homosexual. The most famous example is Ernst Rohm of the SD. While an early member of the party, Rohm was killed off in the infamous “Night of the Long Knives” in 1934. Considering the very real persecution of homosexuals under the Nazi regime, saying that Nazism was a homosexual movement (as opposed to individual Nazis being homosexual) strikes me as the height of perversity.
Bruce Douglas was the young lover of Oscar Wilde’s, whose father got into a libel suit with Wilde, which eventually brought about the downfall of Wilde in English society. Douglas did do one of the first English translations of the Protocols in 1919, nearly twenty years after it was first written. The Protocols came out of Russia, and while it was plagiarized from many sources, including one French anti-Semitic tract, it is clearly a product of reactionary Russian circles. Personally I find the idea that George Bernard Shaw would have written the Protocols to be offensive. I would have no problem accepting Shaw as an anti-Semite along the lines of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. But to think that Shaw would have written such a piece of garbage as the Protocols, boggles the mind. If Shaw had wanted to write a book about Jews plotting to rule the world, this book would have been a model of wit and would have me convinced to become an Elder.
Heh. And what is Chinn’s expertise? Oh, just Jewish History. In other words, Chinn sort of knows what he’s talking about.
So anyway, that happened.
But wait, there’s more! Lively got a bur in his britches over Chinn reprinting the e-mail on his blog and sent another e-mail, wherein he called the (conservative!) Jewish History teacher an anti-Semite! Really. No, seriously, really. You cannot make this stuff up:
Dear Mr. Chinn,
I offered privately what I thought would be a helpful research tip regarding a source you were not likely to have discovered, not a personal conviction to be publicly ridiculed. It was a friendly gesture to a stranger. Your incivility is unbecoming a man of letters.
If anti-Semitism is the dehumanization of people because of their beliefs and values, I’m sorry to say you have become your own case-in-point.
It’s very strange, though, that Lively would be bothered by this. He has, after all, made a career based on just cold making things up about gay people in order to make us look like murderous maniacs, pedophiles and what-have-you. This fits right in with his pattern.
You really should go read Chinn’s entire response to this. It’s fair to say that there are things in there that, in another situation, I would disagree with fervently. Bear in mind that this is a conversation between a conservative religious person and an irrational, insane,and most importantly, malevolent homophobe. I’m willing to grant that there is a difference. But Chinn seems like an honest broker. Not so, Mr. Lively.
So anyway, there you have it. If you’re interested, the discourse just keeps going and going… Somewhere in the second link, Lively tries to defend his work in Uganda, but you know, we have the video, and it says otherwise. As I said before, it’s a discourse between a conservative Jewish man who I could spend hours debating (but will not, because there comes a point when it’s boring) and the extremely disturbed, delusional homophobe Scott Lively. So it gets a bit tiresome.
I think we’ve covered the parts of this that are important.
Left Behind series? Ghostwritten by RuPaul, but I’m sure you figured that…
Join The Impact – Massachusetts, Boston GLAAD, Political Research Associates, Truth Wins Out, and local equality supporters joined in Boston on Feb. 4 to protest the U.S. Christian Right and ex-gay movement’s efforts to undermine human rights and freedom in Africa.
